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Gates: 'Microsoft created the PC industry'
And reckons Steve Jobs is "amazing"...

By Jo Best

Published: Friday 18 February 2005

In an interview with a US TV channel, Microsoft head honcho Bill Gates has been sharing his thoughts on arch rival Steve Jobs and Redmond's contribution to the computer industry.

Speaking with ABC News this week, Gates said he didn't own an iPod and he doubted recent reports that some 80 per cent of Microsoft employees on the Redmond campus owned one of Apple's iPods.

"I doubt that's the case. Certainly, the iPod's a great success," he said but added he predicts Apple's dominance won't last.

"Oh the iPod did a great job but what Apple's done there is typically what they do. It's their, only their one music store, only their device... So it's like the Apple computer versus the PC. With the PC you can buy from many companies so you get cheaper prices, you get more variety and here with music devices we're coming in with the same. But they're a strong leader in the space and I think as we gain share, people will be surprised," he told ABC News.

As well as complimenting Apple's popular music player, Gates went on to compliment Apple's CEO.

"Steve Jobs [has] done a lot of amazing things in our business," he said.

While doffing his cap to a number of Microsoft's rivals, Gates wasn't quite so humble in describing Microsoft's role in the technology industry.

"We're responsible for the creation of the PC industry," he said. "The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software - that's something we brought to computing."

Gates also revealed that he hopes Microsoft's software will become even more ubiquitous than it is already.

"Anywhere that we can have software work for somebody and make them more productive, help them stay in touch. We're going to write software for them. So we do software for watches, for phones, for TV sets, for cars. And some of these take a long time to catch on. In fact it's just this last year our software for cable systems, for TV watching, has really gotten a lot of customers and we have [been] working on that for over 10 years," Gates said.

"The biggest thing we did was we invented the field."

You can read the full transcript of the interview here.